


Good Hands

by fairmanor



Series: My Two Boys [1]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Comforting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Mental Illness, Nurse Marcy, Panic Attacks, david & marcy, mother-son bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26064292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairmanor/pseuds/fairmanor
Summary: Early into David and Patrick’s marriage, Marcy catches her new son-in-law in a moment of vulnerability. She doesn’t want to overstep, but years of training and experience have taught her to know people like David Rose.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: My Two Boys [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2079489
Comments: 42
Kudos: 401





	Good Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackandwhiteandrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackandwhiteandrose/gifts).



> \- blackandwhiteandrose, I've taken your "David/Marcy" and (sort of) "David before & after" jams to Make A Thing. I really hope you enjoy this one!!

If twenty years as a psychiatric nurse have taught Marcy Brewer anything, it’s that this kind of silence is something she needs to explore.

She’s heard it – or, rather, not heard it – before. This non-noise, this absence. She’s tuned to it like a bat. So well, in fact, that as she traces her fingers along the walls of her son and his husband’s new house she’s reminded starkly of the eggshell-white sanitation of her career, even though the pictures are already hung and the couches are draped with crocheted afghans. It’s already lived-in, this cottage, but today something feels out of place. Someone feels alone in here.

It’s been an hour since Patrick and Clint left on a last-minute errand to Elm Glen to pick up some homeware supplies so they could start constructing the boys’ new walk-in wardrobe “the proper way” as a way to finish off their day of decorating. David had insisted that she make herself at home while he tidied the bedroom to make room for the impending design project, so Marcy sat herself down on the couch with a cup of tea and a magazine, feeling warm and full whenever she thought about the fact that there was finally a part of her son’s life in which she could make herself at home at all, no holds barred.

But David has been quiet for a while now. The gentle sounds of rustling and clothes-folding and scraping chairs are gone, and it’s only once Marcy has finished the last page of her magazine that she notices it.

Slowly, she makes her way upstairs, toeing the corridors the way she did when she heard patients muttering in distress, the way she did when she saw Patrick packing his bags and staring around at his childhood bedroom for the last time. The door of the master bedroom is slightly ajar. David isn’t hoovering the space where the wardrobe will soon be or smoothing down the bedcovers. There’s space, hanging stark and open where David should be, and suddenly the room feels big. And as she pokes her head through the door, that sombre, familiar action mode picks up inside her once again.

Her son-in-law is sat at the foot of the bed, left leg outstretched, the right drawn up under his chin. A shaking hand is propped up on the right by his elbow. He’s alternating between biting at his nails and running a hand through his hair, his breaths coming ragged and shallow.

“David, honey?”

David looks up. The movement of his head is stunted, as though some invisible hand pulled it up by his hair. As they always did during her son’s adolescence and a fair portion of his young adulthood, the nurse and the mother battle for dominance inside Marcy. The mother always won out with Patrick, if only because his insistence that he was fine was more of a warning not to come any closer rather than a gentle reassurance.

But this is different. She’s used to the ebbs and flows of her son’s character, used to the things she resigned herself to accept even when it hurt her. Patrick always told her about David being _particular_ , being _flighty_ , narrowing down the complexities of his character into some more succinct, digestible words. Perhaps David hadn’t wanted people to think he was difficult. That had always been a common one with the people on her ward who would have panic attacks and not tell her about them until much later in the day.

David drags the heel of his palm across his face, wiping at stray wetness. He’s not crying, but a fine sheen of sweat has collected on his forehead and his eyes are streaming from a lack of blinking. Marcy can tell he’s a second away from choking out an apology, so she holds up her hands.

“No,” she says simply, curtly, and sits down beside him. The look David gives her is like that of an animal she’s scooped out of a thicket, as though this kind of attention from the very species that hurt him is still foreign, still wild.

Though she’s aware panic attacks can come from nowhere, Marcy scans the room to identify any potential causes or aggravators. Some of David’s and Patrick’s clothes are heaped together into a corner, blue mingled into black, like a bruise or a morning sky. Perhaps David had been holding both at the same time before he dropped them. That sheds a little light onto things.

“Am I okay to touch you, David?”

David nods almost imperceptibly, a little more of him shifting back into reality with the familiar voice and touch of his mother-in-law. With a soft but firm hand on David’s upper back, she lets him work through some of it alone. Time had taught her that constant coddling right from the start was a bad idea. When she feels his breathing steady out minutely, she starts breathing along with him.

“Follow me, David,” she says, “follow my breathing. In for four. Try and hold it, but don’t worry if you can’t.”

David does as he’s told. He’s clawing at his baggy sweatpants, so Marcy takes his hand and clasps it tightly to avoid any kind of damage to the clothing that she knows David will regret later on.

“Slower, David,” she says. “If you feel like talking, tell me what you can feel.”

Through stabilizing breaths, David gulps and manages to choke out, “The…the floor.”

“The floor, and what’s on the floor?”

“The new carpet. It’s soft.”

“Mm. It is. Could you do one more for me?”

“Uh...I…can feel your hand.”

“You can. And I can feel your hand. I think mine’s a little sweaty with all the work we did this morning.”

David huffs out what sounds like a small laugh. Marcy smiles gently. She starts to rub his back, and David lets out a long, slow exhale. Tears gather at the corners of his eyes. Marcy doesn’t try to wipe them away. It’s her personal belief that the first person to ever say _don’t cry_ is a strong contender for one of the most self-destructive bastards in human history.

David lifts his head and looks around the room, this time with a little more clarity and recognition in his eyes. His gaze falls on the pile of clothes that Marcy assumes he must have dropped, and his eyes film over crystalline again.

“Everything’s so connected now,” he whispers, his voice thin and wet and hardly audible.

“What is?” Marcy prompts gently.

“I mean…” David gestures around the room, then brings his hands onto the floor. “This place. The house. Patrick. We’re just completely entwined.”

 _And that’s a bad thing?_ is resting on the tip of Marcy’s tongue, but she learned long ago about the right and wrong times to joke around with patients and sons.

Thankfully, David continues before she has time to say anything. “So what’s going to happen to me when it all goes away again? Will he – I don’t know, take all the bits of me with him?”

This time, Marcy does have something to say. “David, love, where do you possibly think Patrick’s going to go? Home?”

“Not home, he doesn’t –” David blinks. He starts picking at his sweatpants again. “Well. _This_ is his home, I guess…I don’t know. I just think – I just _think_ sometimes, then I think some more, and this happens.”

Marcy sits back, watching the emotions roll across David’s features like sunrises and sunsets, days and nights, as he traces over the grooves and notches of his own life with gentle breaths and twiddling fingers. Patrick had told her enough about David’s life to know the kinds of things that made something as sweet as love so aching and tough for him to swallow. She’d heard it all from David, too, though it was often tinged with that self-deprecating laughter that she would never admit was the only thing she truly didn’t like about her son-in-law. She thought that, in the past, she’d perhaps seen him on the brink of panic, but never in the flesh.

_“Marcy?”_

_Marcy comes into the room quietly, her heart squeezing with pride at the sight of her soon-to-be son in his boots and kilt, a bouquet of white flowers almost worried to pieces in his restless fingers. Well, better the flowers than his beautiful hair. He is, quite simply, the most handsome young man she’s ever known. Well, second-most._

_His look as she enters is almost reproachful, as though he can’t believe yet another thing has fallen out of place in the day that was supposed to be perfect. She toys with the idea of sitting here to talk him through the decades of fear that seem to have surfaced in his eyes today, but with the long, drawn-out way she likes to do things with her patients, that could make them even later than they already are. She desperately wants to return to the Town Hall to resume her place, but there’s something she has to do first._

_“I know I should be in the venue, but I really wanted to give you a little gift before you went in,” Marcy says. “You don’t have to wear it now; I know you spent a lot of time deciding on your outfit. And you look wonderful, by the way.”_

_David cracks a smile. “Thanks.”_

_“Ugh, hurry up, David!” calls Alexis from outside. “We’re not getting any drier out here.”_

_Marcy fishes around in her purse and pulls out a small black box. Conscious of the time, she cracks it open unceremoniously._

_“I know this is a little strange to be talking about on your wedding day, but I always wanted to give whoever Patrick married my veil to wear. It was my great-grandmother’s. And…I know that’s not really possible today, but I still want you to have a piece of it.”_

_Marcy’s heart is fluttering nervously as she hands over the necklace. It’s a simple chain, silver with small links. A teardrop pearl hangs off the end, winking in the mellow light of the motel room. David holds it like it’s something far more precious than anything he’s owned before, looking up at Marcy incredulously, which makes the fact that she’s watching her son-in-law holding a piece of Brewer family history all the more emotionally weighty._

_“Like I said, you don’t have to wear it n– oof!”_

_Necklace clutched tight in one hand, David stands up and pulls Marcy into a crushing hug. She melts into her son, filling with relief at his sure, unafraid grip. He pulls back and unbuttons some of his shirt, then slips the chain over his head. He buttons his shirt again until it’s out of sight. Marcy doesn’t mind. No one else needs to see it anyway._

_“It’s beautiful,” he chokes out. “Thank you.”_

_Marcy rests her palm on his cheek for a moment, locking eyes with him until she’s sure the fear is gone, then hurries out of the motel to try and get to the town hall before they do._

He’s wearing it now, the necklace. That little chain she commissioned and hoped David’s voguish senses wouldn’t pick up on the fact that it was only $20. He's thumbing at it gently as he calms down, and she can see that frightening image of _being intertwined_ changing in his head; it’s less like bindweed now, less like thorns and more like the linking of hands, like the weight of a blanket. And _now_ she feels okay about making a joke.

“They’re only at the hardware store, you know,” Marcy says, and David laughs. Really laughs, this time; that rare, beautiful laugh that Patrick had once texted her about while he was drunk and ended up making her inexplicably teary.

“Shall I help you get the rest of this room ready?”

David nods. Marcy stands up, then helps him up. The first thing she does is separate the blue and black clothing on the floor, hoping that the next time they’re touching is when the people in them are holding each other tight.

They work silently, meditatively, until the room is clean. She catches David looking out of the window, staring at the last stretches of the town he loves so much before it fades into the squared fields that are starting to dampen and go yellow in the coolness of fall.

“Won’t be long before the chill sets in ‘round here, David,” she says. “Do you have a good place to go for firewood?”

David nods and pulls the sleeves of his sweater over his hands. “The woman who makes our wooden stationery at the store said she’s going to give us a winter’s worth for half price.”

Thoughts of winter wood and hot drinks occupy Marcy’s mind, then, as a cold gust of wind comes up from downstairs, followed by a slam and her husband’s recognizable in-from-the-cold sigh. They’re back.

As Clint and Patrick shed their scarves and begin to haul planks of wood and packets of screws up the stairs, David and Marcy settle themselves on the couch. Marcy makes David have a big drink of water with some aspirin and a piece of fruit before she starts heating a pan of hot chocolate for the two of them. Patrick comes down eventually, brushing sawdust off his hands, and Marcy watches him quirk a knowing eyebrow at his husband’s puffy eyes.

“Everything okay over here?” Patrick says, rubbing David’s shoulders and placing a soft kiss on his cheek.

David leans into it and nods. “Don’t worry. I’m in good hands.”

Maybe she’ll tell her husband about all this later, or maybe she won’t. It doesn’t matter. Because it all melts away when Marcy looks at her son’s face. This particular expression is one he definitely inherited from Clint; the one that means Patrick's going to hold David tight later and whisper things in his ear about how much he loves him.

He’s in good hands, indeed.


End file.
